Why Not To Do A Startup - <AUTHOR> http://mattmaroon.com/?p=340 <comment><USER3> While this is mostly true, it's really the case against doing anything especially ambitious, not just starting startups. You could make an almost identical case against trying to write a great novel. The novelists you hear about in the press are the successful ones. Most people who try fail. It sucks up huge amounts of time regardless. The community is littered with sad, failed novelists. And are the ones who succeed satisfied? No; they just start another novel.

<comment><USER4> ever been to LA? a few big stars and producers up in the hills, every other person in the "biz" scattered across miles and miles of flatlands.

<comment><USER5> There are plenty of middle class folks in the "biz". These are the makeup artists, sound designers, animators, model makers and so on. They all make a good living pursuing their dream.

<comment><USER6> The point he's making is that not that many actors make their living through acting. Also, not many people go to Hollywood with a dream of being a gaffer. When you get a union job, you usually live month-to-month since living in Cali can be expensive.

Like with many other "scalable jobs", you have few winners and many, many losers. Acting, singing, startups, CEOs, traders... they all fall into this category.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> _Startups tend to be fairly binary, with you making either a very large amount off of them or nothing at all._

Recently re-reading pg's How To Make Wealth [1] made me wonder if this will soon become an outdated view of startups. The factors leading to the current and predicted rise in the number of startups (free software, cheap hardware, less personnel) should also lead to a large broading of the spectrum of failure <-> success.

The startup world has until recently been determined by its capital-intensive, high-risk nature - big money chasing big rewards. But the new dynamics may leave room for a lot of diversity in between, and consequently a lot more working on some kind of startup. 37 signals can be seen as exemplary of the other extreme to a go-big-or-die startup: founders and employees accept less risk, less pressure and more life for a higher chance of reward, though a lower expected reward. I think there will be a lot of middle ground: a lot of investors willing to accept less risk for lower return, and a whole lot more people will choose lower rewards for a more comfortable life, and better chance of success.

[1] [<http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html>] "The all-or-nothing aspect of startups was not something we wanted. Viaweb's hackers were all extremely risk-averse. If there had been some way just to work super hard and get paid for it, without having a lottery mixed in, we would have been delighted. We would have much preferred a 100% chance of $1 million to a 20% chance of $10 million, even though theoretically the second is worth twice as much. Unfortunately, there is not currently any space in the business world where you can get the first deal."

<comment><USER8> I think this is already happening somewhat thanks to Google's penchant for making a lot of small acquisitions, and other companies following their lead.

The problem still largely remains though. A venture backed company still has a lot more money than a bootstrapped one, and that still translates into a big advantage, even though database software is now free rather than $100k.

<comment><USER7> I suspect there is a massive, unexploited gap in the current venture model (with YC and Google leading the way in exploiting it), which will soon start to rapidly close as the opportunities become clear, and a new set of investment skills is developed.

The current economic turmoil may even help speed the process up somewhat, as investors seek to minimize risk.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> While I was reading this, I kept making a mental translation of the word "startup" into "grad school" (especially the bit about being 30 and single, due to the seven previous years of 80-hour weeks). It held together just as well.

I'm no defender of the blind optimism that goes along with the startup universe, but there are certainly less lucrative ways to waste the best years of your life.

<comment><USER10> My perception was that it's much harder to fail at grad school.

<comment><AUTHOR> It depends on your major... it's really tough to make it as a Biology PhD. There are just so many of them.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Good article, Matt. Thanks. I like the way you think.

I think that part of the confusion of people when they get into the startup scene, is that they loose sight of what a successful exit does for you: solves the money problem. That's it. Nothing else. Nada.

A successful exit will not buy you love. It will not make you instantly happy. An exit will not provide you with meaning and purpose in life. It will not make you immortal. It will not fix all the other problems in your life. It solves one and only one problem: the money problem.

If you talk to people in the valley who were sudden millionaires in the first dot.com gold rush, I think that you'll find that sudden wealth brings its own set of problems which you touched on in your article. I actually remember reading a number of articles about the struggles of the nouveau-rich after their dot com went public.

These things are worth keeping in mind when you're thinking about that startup, or in dealing with relationships while you're in a startup. Be careful burning bridges with family and friends when you're working 100 hours a week with your startup. They might not be there when you find your exit.

</comment><comment><USER12> Matt Maroon : Hacker News 2008 :: Aaron Swartz : Hacker News 2007

Don't get me wrong, though -- they're both good writers, so the above isn't a swipe at either guy or Hacker News.

However: "trailer-dweller" seems a little mean-spirited (and inaccurate) when it's clear who you are referring to with that example.

<comment><USER13> Can someone kindly provide some history of this to those of us that weren't here in 2007?

<comment><USER12> To spell out the analogy, they both:

1) Are young and have started or been part of successful startups

2) Have blogs where they exhibit a strong personality through their writings, which are sometimes controversial but always tinged with elitism.*

3) Were/are darlings of Hacker News, with a high percentage of their blog posts making it high on the front page

*Not that there's anything wrong with that

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> There are some really good points in his article. It doesn't deter me from continuing to work on my startup but a lot of it hit pretty close to home.

I had a high paying job, which I hated, and quit to do a startup last year. The problem was that while I was motivated and working night and day, the other 'founders' weren't nearly as devoted to it. As I went months and months without a paycheck, living off credit cards mostly, my new wife and I got further and further into debt (I quit my job 2 weeks before our wedding, that went over REAL well with the in-laws). After about 6 months I realized I was working all hours of the day for no money on a project that had a single digit chance of working out. At that point even if we did get the funding we were looking for I was still going to be paying off my credit card debt for years just to get back to the place I was before I started. So what could I do?

I got a real job, high paying enough that money isn't a problem anymore. We are still paying on the credit cards but we should have them taken care of in about 6 more months. The failure didn't stop me from working on startups though, I've seen what I'm capable of when I work for myself and after that I can't stand to spend my days working for someone else. In fact I'm already deep into a new startup, something that I'll hopefully be able to share with all of you in the next month or so.

Hopefully this time will turn out better than the last.

</comment><comment><USER15> Wow. Life sucks and then you die.

Now that we've identified the worst case scenario, let's try to improve on it.

</comment><comment><USER16> _Those happen, and your odds of that are probably far better than winning the lottery, but it's still highly unlikely [...] and just like the lottery, everyone thinks their chances are better than they really are._

I hate this comparison - building a successful startup may have some element of luck, but like with everything in life, the amount of luck your success is based on is inversely proportional to the amount of understanding you have of your environment.

If you don't know the currents, getting to the other side does seems to take a lot of luck.

The 37signals folks could write a scathing counter-example to your post. Sure, they might be a rare exceptions, but I never understood why people feel there is fate in statistics... it's possible! It doesn't matter what "the most common startup life" is like, because again, the way your life works out isn't decided by pigeonholing you into fated roles, but by your own choosing.

<comment><USER8> In poker world there's a famous aphorism that says tournaments are a lottery, but the good players get more tickets. (If you want to be technical, the average player gets 1 ticket, the best players get 5-10, the worst get some tiny fraction approaching 0).

Startups work much the same way. Those who win at anything (startups, lottery, poker) always underestimate the amount of luck involved, so if you ask them, they will of course denigrate its role.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> I enjoyed the article.

I have to say, though, and this is totally unrelated to the article itself, that this is one of those pieces where I've thought--hey, I'd like to get in touch with this guy--and yet there's no way to do it directly. I may be the only one who still prefers to communicate specifically with one person directly from time to time, rather than via public comments, blog posts, walls, and the like, but I do. And there's no e-mail address or general contact information I could find on the site, no WHOIS information, no information in the Y Combinator profile on this board, etc. There's probably information somewhere on Facebook, but I can't access Facebook, and even if I could, I'm probably not in the right network to see it.

Oh, well! Still a good article.

<comment><USER8> oh sorry. just send it to matt@.

</comment></comment><comment><USER18> Matt,

Good post. Having both done a startup that didn't go big and now one that looks like it will turn into something big I thing your points are very well made.

As you say, history is written by the winners and about the outliers and totally glosses over the truth for the average majority (and the destructive lows of the minority).

As all of us know who've done it though, doing a business is something that's just in your blood. Most of us who do it didn't do it because we chose to, only because we had to.

I once asked Marc Hedlund a little about the failure of the startup he did before Wesabe. He said it was bad but on balance he didn't feel he came out too badly since he didn't lose his wife or go bankrupt. Enough said.

The highs are insanely high but it's worth writing about the lows too because there's a whole lot of cult around the startup scene that lures people into decisions that can be destructive.

<comment><USER8> I agree. I don't think I've really experienced the lows enough to comment on them. My past startup still returns passive income to this day, and my current one is still running and doesn't seem to be in danger of stopping any time soon.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> It takes really long to make 2 millions as a regular employee, though. Even freelancing, making much more than my employed friends, it would probably take me >= 15 years to make one million EUR (bloody taxes get in the way). And that estimate is without a family. One million really is not a lot of money, if I consider having to live off savings for maybe 30 years or more, in a future time by which money will probably have been devaluated a lot, too (though now I can't imagine life without work, maybe eventually due to aging one has no other choice?).

OK, so maybe betting on a startup to succeed is a dumb plan, some hedging might be in order (occasional consulting gigs to ensure a minimum income - <USER2> other ideas?).

Btw., I wonder what is the average savings rate for employees? I am 35 now, and I recently realised that I am probably way behind on my savings compared to my peers... I think maybe to save about 10000€ per year is realistic?

Still, in my first year of work after getting my degree, according to some statistics I was already in the top 10% of earners of my country. Nevertheless I felt that without inheriting some money from parents (which I won't), I would never have been able to even afford to buy a flat. That is kind of sick, I think. Maybe life as an employee is not so easy, after all. A friend of mine is also an I worker in the top 10% range, and he said he couldn't support his family without help from his parents.

<comment><USER20> The price of houses in the UK for one has gotten ridiculous in the last couple of years - I was lucky and got a place a few years back, but if I hadn't, I wouldn't be able to afford it now - I think its becoming more and more common. The only way around it is to:

* buy a place with one of your mates and share it * Meet a girlfriend/wife that earns a similar amount to yourself

The important thing seems to be to get onto the property ladder as quickly as possible.

As for savings, save as much as you can afford - I probably save 10 - 15% of my salary at the moment (no family to worry about) and it leaves me with enough beer money too!

<comment><USER21> The UK situation is extreme, particularly in London. My girlfriend and I got jobs straight out of university, and we could forget buying a place, and even renting was using up so much of our income that it was just a treadmill.

We left, basically. We've moved to Vienna (Austria) and living relatively cheaply in my late grandmother's place. I'm trying to get a startup off the ground, she's slowly figuring out what she wants to do.

And yeah, we're super-lucky to even have that opportunity.

I honestly don't know how London is staying as populous as it is. As far as I can see you're completely stuck with graduate salaries. (except in banking)

<comment><USER20> Yea, London is a total joke, as is Dublin - I have a few friends who rent in Dublin, and they live in a shoe box for a lot of rent (don't really know anyone in London)!

I am in Belfast, where the property prices only ballooned about 2 years ago, so I got lucky. Only a year or so after I got my house, friends were buying similar sized places that are less central for twice what I paid, not good!

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> Good one. Being the pessimist I am, I enjoy thinking about the flip side of things.

Really good programmers also need to consider other opportunity costs. Linus and the world are better off because he has pretty much stuck with Linux through thick and thin, and never got heavily involved in running a startup. Tcl started going downhill when Ousterhout did Scriptics (although he did make lots of money). Some people are better off focusing 100% on tech, in other words.

</comment><comment><USER23> Definitely a lot of truth in this article, but Matt barely acknowledges the advantages to doing startups. I also think that he's way too pessimistic about things like maintaining friendships and finding things to do after cashing out -- both of those are probably a lot easier than he describes.

<comment><USER8> That was the point of my article. The advantages are well-covered. The disadvantages aren't.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> It seems to me that a startup can reduce its risk by swapping stock with another startup. That way, if either startup has a liquidity event, then the founders of both startups get approximately half as rich as they would have without the swap. Of course, more than just two startups can participate in a stock-pooling arrangement, reducing the participant's risk further.

Of course a startup does not want to swap stock share-for-share with just any other startup, and there are startups whose prospects are so dim that even if they offer 5 or 10 shares for every share of yours, you would not want to swap stock with them. And learning enough about another startup to judge their expected earnings is a lot of work. But sometimes the work has already been done for you, by YC for example.

There exists what economists call a "moral hazard" here: namely, once a startup has swapped stock with more than one or two other startups, its optimal strategy is for its founders not to put themselves out (that is, to coast, to relax) and rely on the possibility that one of the other startups will make a lot of money. But this is the same concern any individual founder has when he takes on any co-founder, and the solution is the same: you have (or someone you can trust has) to watch the other startups with whom you have swapped stock closely enough to verify that they are working as hard as you are. (YC's requirement that the startups it invests in must all move to the same city makes it easier for YC startups to watch each other in this way.) Along with that you will want to give yourself a time frame (1 year seems about right) during which time you can back out of the stock swap deal if you believe the startup you are swapping stock with is not putting themselves out (or has misrepresented themselves in negotiations with you).

I can think of several way to refine this strategy to deal fairly for example with the situation in which one startup gives up after 18 months while another works hard for four years, but I will stop here for now.

<comment><USER25> That's a very interesting idea! This sounds like something that could be brokered more efficiently by YC or something similar - create an option pool for all the companies in a season (maybe 1% or 0.5% of each). 1% split 6 (8? how many companies per season?) ways isn't a ton, even in a big liquidity event, but's a nice hedge that would reduce risk for all the founders and make YC even more attractive.

For instance, 1% of a $10 mil acquisition would be $100K. If there are 8 companies that round, each would get $12.5K, which for 2-3 founders is like another infusion of YC cash and a few more months of runway.

Hardly enough to cause a moral hazard but still a significant benefit.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> This article can also be used to support Y Combinator's policy of preferring startups that aren't one person operations.

The problem of being lonely at the top is pretty much eliminated if you found your startup with some buddies who are also smart, creative, and motivated. If your startup is successful, you'll have some good friends who are in the same position as you and who have just gone through the entire startup experience with you.

</comment><comment><USER26> @Matt, You might enjoy Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton. A lot of the criticisms you attribute to startups could just as well be directed toward the entire system that ties social status to money and success. If startups are more blameworthy than other things, I suspect it's mostly because they move the locus of responsibility for success/failure closer to oneself, thus having a multiplier effect on social status.

<comment><USER26> s/multiplier effect on social status/multiplier effect on your anxiety over your social status/

</comment></comment><comment><USER27> It is good to see a contradicting post here from time to time, as there are a lot of downsides to starting a company.

I found myself at the age of 30 many years into a company I started at 23, and it consumed my entire 20's. Every aspect of my life suffered.

Are people aware of the strange things stress can do to one's body? Look up 'IBS' in google. Try not eating for a year. That's just the stuff I can post.

I missed weddings and funerals. I did things I'm so extremely proud of, and things I'm ashamed of.

Here is the real rub: Once you hire employees, you have an obligation to give them a consistent paycheck. It just happens. This increases 10x when the employees aren't kids in their early twenties working for stock options making peanuts who get 10 job offers a week.

When you have employees who have families that depend on your company, depend on your health plan, your dental plan, your 401k matching funds, the pressure to maintain even when times are tough is huge.

The game can change quickly. Having employees will make it harder to throw up your arms when things get tough and say 'perhaps I don't have a winner here'. You will dig in, and continue the battle, and you are committed until it can survive on it's own. And sometimes that takes a couple years.

Or five.

Or ten.

So a word of caution. Keeping a company alive is tough. Closing down a company is tougher. A fairy tale ending is a pipe dream. Last time I checked, there are a very small number of Mark Cuban's, and this sure ain't 1998. And guess what Jerry Yang is doing: working his ass off to save the soul of his baby. His hugely successful baby.

He doesn't have to be there.

He made his billions. But things aren't right, and he can't sleep at night.

Success is hitting payroll every month. Never ever miss payroll. Any goodness above that is gravy. Anything worse than that is hell.

Would I change it all, and to have just gotten a job out of college, reporting to someone every day of my life? Hell no!! I love it. I could think of no better way to live my life. :)

</comment><comment><USER28> I think this article is a great read... but just as he calls success in startups binary, so is the definition of what a startup actually is. Some aren't looking for that payoff in the end, and the lear jet. Some people simply just want to work for themselves, and can lead a simple lifestyle.

The idea that you have to 'go big or go home' in tech is getting more outdated I'd say. If I have to choose between being a corporate toad or a work-enslaved zombie, I choose neither. We live in a free-market economy, which gives us the flexiblity to make what we want with it. Isn't that what entrepreneurism is all about?

</comment><comment><USER29> Staying employed and slowly building your wealth is not a riskless proposition. Past 20 years have been very nice to the tech sector and to equities in general. What are you going to say when your employer suddenly collapses and takes your pension/stock wealth with it (Enron, Bear Stearns etc)?

Even more extreme -- what if the whole economic cycle reverses, the currency devalues and inflation eats up your savings? Hard to imagine, but economic systems have this capacity for extreme events. I know the whole generation of honest engineers in Soviet Union who have not built a capital to retire on (obviously) and who were left desolate in their 50s-60s without pensions or jobs when their state companies/research labs collapsed.

Startup offers an option to strike it rich. If you hit the sweet spot of some business 'fitness function' - then you're set for life. If not, the most obvious strategy is to try as many startups as possible in your lifetime. This is like having a venture fund spread in time. One of your holdings should make it, the rest of them you expect to fail. It's nice if the winner comes when you're in your 20s :) But not necessary.

However, focusing on a single make-or-brake business idea and betting your farm (life) on it is a stupid idea. It is sad that many engineers are actually one-idea phenomena simply because of their specialization. Venture capitalists are in the best position, as they sit on the portfolio of options (startups).

<comment><USER8> Of course nothing is riskless, but it's pretty close if done properly. Plowing all of your retirement savings into the stock of your employer is something that anyone who spends ten minutes Googling "how to manage my money" knows is retarded.

I'm sure it's possible to instead put your 401k and IRA money into a diversified collection of ETFs and bonds and such and still end up broke, but it hasn't happened yet, and if it does, our entire country is in a very bad place.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Nice article.

If you can answer the question "What you would like to do with your life?", the macro decisions, then decisions such as doing a startup or not, where to buy a house, etc. seem pale in comparison.

</comment><comment><USER31> This is like saying living is dangerous because you might die.

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe I missed the scary part of the article. It made me want to succeed even more.

</comment><comment><USER33> this is a more articulate version of what i've been saying. do a startup if it will make you happy. Some people are only truly happy when they're challenged as thoroughly as only running your own business can be. But don't just assume it's for you based on how cool it seems.

</comment><comment><USER34> A finely written article, and he almost had me going there for a while. The most frustrating thing for me, though, is how he implies that a default life of "ballgames," "ballet recitals," and working for someone else is superior by its very nature. Not everyone wants to not live up to their full potential and trade freedom for some veneer of security. Ultimately, this kind of thing is just more inspiring because it makes me want to prove him wrong (no offense to the author, of course).

<comment><USER8> None taken, you just didn't understand it. I'm not saying it is superior, just that a lot of people would find it to be, and those people may not belong in startups.

<comment><USER34> Ah, I do see your point. Basically, you were saying people should make sure they _really_ know what they want out of life before blowing their best years, yeah?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> My apologies to JRM's karma. I'd give you some points if I could.

<comment><USER8> bahaha. If I could somehow give you +10 for that comment I would.

<comment><AUTHOR> You could mod up 10 of my other comments, but Paul Graham would have to remove your voting rights for abusing the system.

I think allowing arbitrary karma transfer on here would be an interesting experiment in reputational economies.

<comment><USER35> give each player a "karma budget" and have them earn more if other people give karma similarly, and you've basically made a news.yc futures market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER36> This article is very well written - might not reflect the truth of how everything HAS to be in a startup but definitely reflects how most startups end up being. Also, and as I have been lately figuring out, the reason most startups end up being like this is because most startups have a misplaced understanding on how things are supposed to work.

A lot of them try to do too much or try to compete when they should be ideally figuring out the business.

Good mentorship goes a long way of making the startup work the right way.Getting good mentors who have done startups is really the harder part.

Startups are good for society and hopefully good for the individuals who do them - but they need to be done the right way. Matts article serves as a cautionary tale to every startup entrepreneur. If he describes your startup really well, you are probably doing it the wrong way.

</comment><comment><USER37> While it's good to mentally prepare one's self with the knowledge that startups are (usually) a long hard road, and success is far from guaranteed, this article seemed a bit too negative for negativity's own sake. For my tastes anyway.

It's important to try to do great things, and it's noble to encourage others to do the same. ("Yay YC," you know?)

Seth Godin has an old post on this that I think serves as a good reminder, and still rings very true to me. A key quote:

"The thing is, we still live in a world that's filled with opportunity. In fact, we have more than an opportunity -- we have an obligation. An obligation to spend our time doing great things. To find ideas that matter and to share them."

\--[http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/only-two- yea...](http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2007/12/only-two-years.html)

<comment><USER8> I totally disagree with the assertion that it's important to try to do great things, or at all noble to encourage others to do so. For some of us it is, for some of us it is not, and it isn't universal. I don't think it's safe to assume that it's what is is best for everyone and try to encourage them to do it. It clearly is not the best course through life for most people.

It's incredibly selfish to try to convince others to sacrifice their own happiness to make the world a better place for you and to do what you think is important. If someone is happier working at Wal-Mart, and it means they won't author the next web-based [insert MS Office product here] why try to convince them otherwise? Because you want that social network for [insert hobbyist or demographic here]?

<comment><USER37> "I totally disagree with the assertion that it's important to try to do great things (...)"

I must admit, I respect your difference of opinion, but I find it very hard to relate to your point of view. Your statement seems to be contrary to a basic aspect of the human condition; that is, the desire to improve our lots in life.

Greatness does not mean "startups for everyone". Perhaps the use of "our obligation" in my quote from Seth Godin meant "completely everyone's obligation" in your interpretation? For me, it meant the obligation of Seth's audience; that is, many of the same types with dreams of entrepreneurship who read YC news. In any case, my belief, which I believe to be the common one, is that greatness has a definition in many different situations.

Personal experience and my readings on the science of happiness (see "Flow: the Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihály Csíkszentmihályi) lead me to believe that the happy Wal-Mart employee is probably happy because they are able to regularly accomplish things that are meaningful to them in an environment they find suitably challenging. To say it simply, the happiness the employee finds in their work means they are likely a great Wal-Mart employee!

I think your interpretation of my statement on the nobility of encouragement alters the meaning very dramatically from the plain contextual meanings of my words. Perhaps I am not cynical enough, but to me, 'encouraging' another implies having their best interests at heart, not one's own.

For some of the readers here at YC News, we find ourselves with a startup dream inside of us that we are nearly dying to express externally. Indeed, I agree with you that those who plan to undertake a startup should take pause and not do so lightly. I believe that most of the startup bloggers you speak of at least suggest this. Encouraging people who have taken this look at the strength of their desire and their capability -- that is, freely helping this self-prepared group to reach the happiness they seek -- seems quite noble to me.

I feel I also ought to say something about the strength of your apparent disillusionment with the concept of startups. Life as a entrepreneurial success doesn't have to mean that all of one's old friends and new acquaintances turn manipulative. If it is a fear, one could simply give money beyond living allowance away to worthy causes and step back from the power game (see Woz). It's true there are relationship strengthening opportunities to be missed in starting a company, but there are also some to be gained. Co- founders may become best friends. Compatible significant others may be easier to attract when one is doing what one is passionate about.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> What a downer of an article.

</comment><comment><USER39> What is the percentage of success for YC startups?

<comment><USER3> It's too early to tell, because it takes 4-5 years to say for sure if a startup has succeeded, and YC is only 3 years old.

I'd be happy if it was a third, and delighted if it was as high as 50%.

<comment><USER8> What I'd like to know is, what % need to succeed for you guys to turn a profit. I'm sure it's too early to tell that too, but do you have any guesses?

<comment><USER3> Depends on the definition of succeed. IPO or HR acquisition? If the former, 1%. If the latter, more like 20-30%.

<comment><USER8> Right, I'd be interested to see 10 years down the line how many successes fit into each category (and in between). Still, if you can remain in the black with just 30% ending in an HR acquisition that's pretty strong. Seems like you should easily accomplish profitablity.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Honestly, I'm not sure what was the point. How powerful this statement by a smoker is "Please, quite smoking" or something like "Don't try climbing mountains. It's dangerous." by Sir Everest. Bad example, may be. But then may be I'm not the target audience.

</comment><comment><USER4> a decent article that sparked great comments makes this an excellent article. startups for me = an opportunity to pursue things you are passionate about - an opportunity to make a name for oneself - and most importantly an overcome great odds and obstacles, which unlike the lottery you actually have some control over. that is why startups are great.

</comment><comment><USER41> I would have entitled this article, "Don't Let This Happen to You, Now Get Back to Work."

</comment><comment><USER42> Gotta say: Bullshit point of view.

</comment><comment><USER43> He should have started the article by defining what he means by "success".

Me, I don't need plentyoffish money to be successful. Just give me some hope and some extra cash and I'll call it a small win.

</comment><comment><USER44> startup (a) do, to not (ask)why (did not)!

<comment><USER45> ?

<comment><USER44> by changing the order of the words from the title, and creating a new phrase to remind you that you should do a startup because you may regret of not doing so.

this also shows that the startup world is so fluid as much a title can be. everything has a different intepretation by different people.

a startup is a personal experience and the reasons for someone who choses not to pursue a startup should not be the excuse or affect anyone's choice to make their attempt.</comment></comment></comment>


USB 3.0 SuperSpeed gone wild at CES 2010, trumps even your new SSD - <AUTHOR> http://www.engadget.com/2010/01/09/usb-3-0-superspeed-gone-wild-at-ces-2010-trumps-even-your-new-s/ <comment><USER2> Nice, but the big news to me in that article is that Apple seems to once again go their own way with the LightPeak one-connector-to-rule-them-all alternative.

<comment><USER3> Anybody here know if Apple + Intel own a patent on the LightPeak connectors? Like, maybe, they want everybody to use LightPeak, but more importantly, pay Apple and Intel for LightPeak licensing?

If I'm wrong, and they're really promoting a standard for optical transfer from PC to peripheral that's awesome.

<comment><AUTHOR> USB 3.0 is optical if I understood the article correctly.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _Yes, we're about to enter another dimension. A time when external drives are as fast as internal ones._

Just checking - is this hyperbole? I've had external Firewire drives that offered noticably more bandwidth than my internal drives at the time, & before that, scsi.

<comment><USER5> Or eSATA, of course.</comment></comment>


MIT Hacks Kinect Laser For A Wearable Map Generator For Firefighters - <AUTHOR> http://techcrunch.com/2012/09/25/mit-hacks-kinect-laser-for-a-wearable-map-generator-for-firefighters/

<comment><USER2> Direct link to MIT news release: [http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/automatic-building- mappin...](http://web.mit.edu/newsoffice/2012/automatic-building- mapping-0924.html)

Wouldn't smoke scatter the IR pattern of Kinect? I think there might be some more work to be done before it can be a useful tool for firefighters.</comment>


Sites that connect designers and developers (like builditwihtme) - <AUTHOR>

http://builditwith.me/   is the only one i know that brings together designers and developers, who want to leverage each others' services and create start-ups or work on ideas.<p>Do you know of any other similar sites? <comment><USER2> There's Forrst. <http://forrst.com/></comment>


Live View of Hurricane Laura - ajay-d https://www.windy.com/?28.695,-93.082,7 <comment><AUTHOR> This isn't live at all. It's based on the ECMWF/GFS models, which are updated every six hours, and are estimates rather than raw observations. For actual live data, you can see a live feed from the Hurricane Hunters recon aircraft (updated every ten minutes) here:

[https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/recon/](https://www.tropicaltidbits.com/recon/)

<comment><USER2> Can someone explain what I'm looking at here? Thanks!

<comment><AUTHOR> MSLP = mean sea level pressure, lower means a stronger storm

SFMR = instrument to measure winds on the ground/ocean, which are usually weaker than at the plane's altitude

kts = knots = multiply by 1.15 to get wind speeds in miles per hour

dropsonde = thing they drop out of the plane to measure wind, temperature, and pressure at different altitudes as it falls

Here's how to read wind barbs: [http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/info/about_windbarb.html](http://weather.rap.ucar.edu/info/about_windbarb.html)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER3> There's a better link. Windy.com has a hurricane tracker view: [https://www.windy.com/-Hurricane- tracker/hurricanes?gustAccu...](https://www.windy.com/-Hurricane- tracker/hurricanes?gustAccu,28.800,-101.889,5,i:pressure)

</comment><comment><USER4> Just 1-2 days ago someone posted an article that if a bad hurricane hits Houston area it will be like Chernobyl because of all the oil and chemicals stored in the area. Now the hurricane seems to be heading there. Man this year 2020 keeps on giving.

<comment><USER5> My wife said today, if someone wrote a movie about 2020, it'd be unbelievable, nobody would buy it.... well until next year anyways.

<comment><USER6> On a different but similar note. If the exact movie Contagion, shot for shot, had come out next year everybody would hate it for basically being a slight exaggeration and following the news too closely with barely any originality.

<comment><USER7> Pandemic seems to be the most popular board game of the year. I don't have figures for beer, but I suspect corona is doing well too.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Ya'll probably know this but I'm very interested in tracking Laura as she landfalls using specifically barometers in phones. I do this with All Clear:

[https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearwe...](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.allclearweather.android) (US android app), source code I write for the clever 'background' sensor data on Android here [1] and animation of the non-landfalling Hurricane Dorian last year as viewed from phones in Eastern Florida [2]

I think with Laura landfalling and travelling across the US for a while, there should be a lot of interesting and maybe useful surface-pressure readings to be had.

Stay safe if you are anywhere near this hurricane. It is ...unprecedented.

[1] [https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary](https://github.com/JacobSheehy/AllClearSensorLibrary)

[2] [https://www.allclearweather.com/hurricane- dorian](https://www.allclearweather.com/hurricane-dorian)

Also I suppose it's important to shoutout /r/tropicalweather, just about the best community on reddit. Their megathreads and links are always useful. [https://reddit.com/r/tropicalweather](https://reddit.com/r/tropicalweather)

<comment> purple-again What is unprecedented about this hurricane?

<comment><USER8> The extreme rapid intensification over the last 24-36 hours is record setting I believe. And presently it is still strengthening and will potentially set many records - I suppose I shouldn't speak too soon with 'unprecedented' but all signs indicate this will be an extreme event.

<comment><USER9> God, it'd be incredible if this became a Category 6 in 2020. Hurricane Dorian almost hit that milestone.

<comment><USER8> FWIW there is no official category 6, as 5 is deemed as essentially total destruction and there isn't much need for a 6. It's a topic of debate however.

Also Laura may reach a minimal category 5 but is unlikely to intensify past baseline 5 status.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Looks like it will make landfall right on top of a hazardous wastes management plant. [https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-93.33...](https://firstname.lastname@example.com,-93.3372794,361m/data=!3m1!1e3!4m10!1m2!2m1!1smonkey+island+cameron+new+orleans!3m6!1s0x863c698f5763d2d7:0xc406ceb9a4dd8203!8m2!3d29.7825049!4d-93.3334581!11m1!2e1)

<comment><USER11> There are tons of oil refineries and chemical plants in that area. I hope they built them to withstand these kind of winds.

</comment></comment><comment><USER12> NOAA generally has good coverage of US Storms (of all sorts)

Here is the satelite: [https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/floater.php?stormid=AL...](https://www.star.nesdis.noaa.gov/goes/floater.php?stormid=AL132020)

lots of maps and such updated frequently

"Unsurvivable Storm Surge" yikes. [https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at3+shtml/031757.s...](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/refresh/graphics_at3+shtml/031757.shtml?key_messages#contents)

"Maximum sustained winds are near 150 mph (240 km/h) with higher gusts. No significant change in strength is likely before landfall. Rapid weakening is expected after Laura moves inland."[1]

[1][https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT3+shtml/270253...](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/text/refresh/MIATCPAT3+shtml/270253.shtml)?

<comment><USER13> Wow. Apparently a category four is 130-156 mph sustained, and category 5 is anything over that.

[https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php](https://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutsshws.php)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> FYI the updates are pretty old - nearly 12 hours by this point. Laura is projected to be a Cat 4 hurricane at landfall.

</comment><comment><USER15> Windy has a satellite view of the hurricane here:

[https://www.windy.com/sv/-Satellit- satellite?satellite,29.07...](https://www.windy.com/sv/-Satellit- satellite?satellite,29.071,-91.741,7)

Hit play button to see progress from last hour to current.

</comment><comment><USER16> I've always liked [https://earth.nullschool.net/](https://earth.nullschool.net/)

If you click the button in the bottom left, it has a lot of features for viewing things like Wind speed, Wave Height, Atmospheric particulates and even Aroura activity.

</comment><comment><USER17> That is a beautiful app, and internationalization is ideal. If Ivo and team read HN, great job!

<comment><USER18> I didn't want to noise up the comments, but the first thing I noticed is that the site worked fine even with uBlock Origin turned on. That's a rare sight! Compliments from me too.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> Looks like it is affecting wind patterns blowing outward all the way to Minnesota and Wyoming. Or are those streams normal?

</comment><comment><USER20> Is it supposed to have completely black background?

</comment><comment><USER21> Does anybody work on how to extract energy from hurricanes? A pretty powerful wind turbine...

<comment><USER22> That's basically how offshore windfarms work. Electricity generation firms place wind turbines offshore where there is usually stronger wind. Having windfarms specifically for hurricanes wouldn't be viable since hurricanes strike infrequently and in different locations.

<comment><USER21> Well, maybe you need mobile devices. Or, more exotic, a way to influence the hurricane path...</comment></comment></comment>


The Death of the Statistical Tests of Hypotheses - <AUTHOR> http://www.datasciencecentral.com/profiles/blogs/the-death-of-the-statistical-test-of-hypothesis <comment><USER2> From the article and poking around the site it appears that the author has basically rediscovered the empirical CDF.

(Also its not at all clear what the author's "jackknife" is, but the real one dates to the 1950s [https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackknife_resampling](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jackknife_resampling) )</comment>


CLI Twitter status update bot - <AUTHOR> https://github.com/Idnan/tweet-cli <comment><USER2> This sounds like it would be against Twitter's terms of service.

<comment><AUTHOR> I don't care :)</comment></comment>


A cautionary tale about subscription services and how not to shut down a startup - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@ireneau/whimseybox-and-a-cautionary-tale-about-subscription-services-and-how-not-to-shut-down-a-startup-be1bd2c69ecd <comment><USER2> It isn't necessary to dream up scenarios of unethical action on the part of anyone for this to happen.

Startups fail. Fact of life. We talk about "burn rate" and "runway" because it is easier to say than "The number of days you have to find a working business model or secure additional investment, after which you have to fire all of your employees because you cannot make payroll."

When startups know they're going to fail to make payroll, they fire _all employees_. Fact of life. Fired employees are the worst affected people when a startup collapses, by a factor of lots. They don't get to call up their credit card company and chargeback forgone wages for the last three years.

When you're the non-technical CEO of a subscription commerce company, and you find yourself in an empty office without employees, if you're hypothetically aware that subscriptions are still active -- which you very well might not be aware of -- you have very limited options for actually fixing it. You might as well ask my dad to do an orderly shutdown of Appointment Reminder given I get hit with a bus tomorrow.

Could this have been handled better? Yeah. There's a reason that when startups ask for advice on what to do in their remaining hours of life we always say the words "Prepare and execute on a plan to effect an orderly wind-down of the business." It's not exactly something people are born knowing and might not be at top-of-mind while they're going through an enormously stressful event.

<comment><USER3> Taking money with no intention of delivering a product is unethical. I think I was born knowing that. Or, at least, I learned it pretty early on.

Being too lazy to shut off the site is not an excuse.

<comment><USER4> It's not only unethical, it is fraud.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> Well, they seem to be in violation of the FTC's Mail Order Rule.

First, who are they? Their street address is

2409 20TH ST BOULDER CO 80304 US

which is a house.

A Colorado corporation search gives a second address:

1738 Pearl St., Suite 2A, Boulder, CO 80302, United States

which looks like office space above a restaurant in Google Street View. Their landlord is Pearl Street Properties ([http://www.pearlstreetmallproperties.com](http://www.pearlstreetmallproperties.com)) and calling them during working hours might be helpful.

They're incorporated in Delaware, but are delinquent in filing with Colorado. Delaware corporation search only works on weekdays, so not much is available from there tonight.

The founder is Alicia DiRago. Not only is the company not communicating, her rather busy personal online life has stopped.

Here's her Twitter feed, which stopped on September 3, 2014: [https://twitter.com/aliciadirago](https://twitter.com/aliciadirago)

Here's her other startup, Dismount Creative, which was last updated on August 3, 2014: [http://www.dismountcreative.com/](http://www.dismountcreative.com/)

Her personal Facebook account, last updated in January 2014: [https://www.facebook.com/alicia.dirago](https://www.facebook.com/alicia.dirago) Definitely the right person; she's wearing a Whimseybox T-shirt in her profile picture.

She's married and lives in Boulder, CO. The address is a matter of public record, but I won't list it here. Her husband, Joseph DiRago, is an attorney in Boulder. No news items or obituaries for either of them.

This is a very tiny operation and there's probably a personal problem. This isn't a big enough business to be a scam.

<comment><USER6> Shutting down the website of a bancrupt company is not hard.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> I literally just tried to sign up for this as a gift for someone this past weekend.

I tried to buy a year gift subscription and got an error message. It showed me a silly error message which included Ryan Gosling promising a foot massage for me to keep my calm. I mistakingly tried 2 more times and now see 3 charges on my credit card.

For what it's worth, they use Stripe. I saw the $1 pending transaction they tried. Hopefully Stripe can shut them down.

<comment><USER8> Did you file chargebacks?

<comment><USER7> I did this on Saturday and will give WhimseyBox the benefit of the doubt to fix this by Mon/Tues before disputing with Amex. It's always a slow road when Amex investigates.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> How is their site still up and running, accepting new members and payments, if they can't afford to continue on as a going concern? Is this out-and-out fraud?

EDIT: Looks like they're no longer accepting payment, but if this article is right, they still were for a very long time after ceasing shipments.

</comment><comment><USER10> Saying things like "Now Techstars has lost complete credibility in my mind" is taking things too far and just being petty. Techstars doesn't market itself as some bastion of credibility to consumers.

Yes, this a great example of what not to do when you know your company is doomed, and the founders are killing their long-term prospects of future ventures with all this bad karma, but there's no need to drag Techstars into it.

<comment><USER11> Not to mention: there's not a whole lot Techstars can even do about this. They're a minority investor and their involvement is limited to the first few months of company operation. This comes up every once in awhile with YC, too.

<comment><USER12> I initially completely agreed, but now I'm less sure. I used to mentor someone, and if he was found using skills I taught him to act fraudulently, I would accept partial responsibility.

Obviously Techstars can't force people to stop shenanigans, but I hope for a society where we expect more of each other, where behaving ethically is not more or less important that profits but simply completely necessary.

I'm not sure I can, in good conscience, condemn someone for expecting more of a renowned institution, however minor that renown is. I also think that the author of this post is in a place to understand what is possible and expected of investors, given she is an Operating Partner at Khosla Ventures.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I think Hanlon's razor applies here ("Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity.") - when startups fail it is difficult to fail gracefully. It leaves you with lots of stuff to do, all the time knowing that you will get nothing in return. Frustrating and tiring as hell. (I don't condone the founder's actions, I just say I can understand what has lead to this situation) That said, I hope they make it right as soon as possible.

</comment><comment><USER14> Unfortunately what you experienced is really common.

One company deliver "led lights" does everything, except deliver the goods. Web site is up, customer support answers to messages (as long as you're going to order something) and they'll accept payments. But that's where it ends.

My dad got a new cellphone and it got the number which is still being shown on that web page. It's nice to receive more and less angry calls all day long from people getting scammed all the time.

Unfortunately this seems to be quite common problem. Isn't it the business focus? Do the things which make money, don't mind about the rest. Web site, credit card handling, and customer support, all generate revenue. Delivering goods is bad business, it generates substantial expences.

One famous entrepreneur in finland said that invoicing is the thing that runs the business, rest is irrelevant.

</comment><comment><USER15> Maybe this post got their attention? (edit: doubtful as it was posted 4 minutes ago)

 _We 're Sorry

Whimseybox is no longer taking new subscriptions, gifts, or shop orders at this time._

[https://whimseybox.com/subscription/new](https://whimseybox.com/subscription/new)

<comment><USER16> The home and signup pages have no mention of this at all

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> This is why I want to just pay for everything with Bitcoin. I gave my credit card to a site (not a subscription site) and they charged me and never delivered. I contacted them and they said they refunded the charge and put in a new order (???). So now I had TWO charges. Why didn't they just ship me the stuff without charging me again? I disputed one charge with the credit card company and the company refunded me after they saw the chargeback. Then a month later they ordered again for me. I had to charge back a second time (and I got a refund back again).

Are you kidding me? The model of "I have your credit card number and the code on the back and I can charge you as many times as I want" is clearly broken.

<comment><USER18> But bitcoin will not help you at all, when there is no delivery. Bitcoin has no charge back. Bitcoin is in this sense mor like Western Union.

The credit card system gives much better consumer protection most of the time.

<comment><USER17> No, the point is they DID deliver, but they tried to keep charging me for new deliveries.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Great article, shame it happened. I'm really curious as to how this idea didn't really succeed - seemed like a slam dunk service. Anyone know more?

<comment><USER20> If anything these X box a month services pop up so frequently I'm surprised there is not a startup to help people make their own x box a month companies.

<comment><USER21> There is actually, and it's nice! [http://cratejoy.com](http://cratejoy.com)

<comment><USER22> Hook that into [http://bride.ru](http://bride.ru) and you've got a winner!

More seriously, automating the process of harvesting credit card numbers and signing them up for monthly billing, then taking a cut, is evil genius.

Even more seriously, the sex-trade people were way ahead on this, by happily offering canceling customers refund checks with mind-blowingly dirty names on them to discourage deposit.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> A great warning for founders considering a subscription-based freemium model.

</comment><comment><USER24> Interesting. Is there a market for shut-down services? Clearly they had "something" if people are still signing up. Might not be a $100mm exit but I'm sure someone would enjoy running this for a few million in cash each year?

<comment><USER25> If i understand you correctly, you just valuated this business at 'a few million'? What makes you think its worth more than 5k?

</comment></comment><comment><USER26> For those with integrity, it's not worth the read. Yes, stop taking money from new customers when you've shut down the company.

For those without integrity, it's a recommendation: There are trusting people who will signup & pay even if you don't deliver.

The world is still wild, and I like that. Nothing to recommend than to be skeptical and ethical please.

</comment><comment><USER27> A friend of mine has recommended [https://www.entropay.com/](https://www.entropay.com/) for these kinds of online purchases : since it's a pre-paid virtual credit card, you cannot get charged beyond the pre-paid amount, if I understood it correctly. The initial loading fees of 4.95% seems quite high, but my immediate next thought was : I would personally still pay it for the security! Warning : I have yet to try it out myself; this is just word-of-mouth, not a personal recommendation. I intend to try it out soon with taobao.com, to which I have taken an immense liking recently, despite getting the wrong colour for my mechanical keyboard which I ordered from there :-)

<comment><USER28> You cannot be charged but you can be sent to collections and have your credit ruined. So be careful, people think closing a payment account is akin to a cancellation, it is not.

<comment><USER22> So what's the least-bad way for plebes who care about credit ratings to deal with Comcast-levels of "customer retention," or just plain dishonesty and stonewalling like in this case? Never set up a recurring payment? That's been my approach for awhile, but it demands a bit of vigilance.

EDIT: After dealing with customer "service" utterly failed, I had to disconnect from Verizon after my 2-year contract by refusing to pay them. It worked, but probably only because I had unchecked the "auto-pay" box every month for two years.

<comment><USER29> _So what 's the least-bad way for plebes who care about credit ratings to deal with Comcast-levels of "customer retention," or just plain dishonesty and stonewalling like in this case?_

I no longer have much patience for big companies that mess me around, but it's important to always be reasonable if you want a good result, and particularly if you might wind up taking real legal action. So, this is my general plan:

First, assuming I'm properly entitled to cancel whatever agreement we have, they always get one attempt to play nice and give reasonable notice to cancel by their preferred mechanism. I make a clear record of what happens at this stage, e.g., if I called them then I note the time of the call, who I spoke to, and what was said. Recording the call can be a useful alternative here, but be careful to check what is legal in your jurisdiction before you do this.

Second, if cancelling their way fails or proves to be unreasonably difficult, I skip right to sending a recorded letter to their registered address or the equivalent. I explain briefly what happened before, and I state clearly that I am terminating the agreement and that I do not agree to further charges. Always be polite and fair.

Third, depending on the amounts of money and timescales involved, I also contact whatever payment services are involved preemptively to make clear that I have not authorised any further payments. Again, keep good records. Alternatively, if I get charged again then at this point I would formally dispute the charge, if necessary providing the payment service with the records to show that I have given proper notice to cancel.

If we get this far and working with the payment service(s) doesn't get things fixed reasonably quickly, it's a case of whether the time and money involved justify proper legal action, and following whatever process is required.

Opinions differ on whether to include a threat that further trouble will lead to legal action at the letter stage. Any allusion to a legal action might get bounced directly to their legal department, which is probably better or worse depending on whether you know what you're doing and whether they know you know. If they call your bluff and you don't know what you're doing, you could wind up spending far more time and money chasing even a simple small claims action than it's worth, or more likely giving up and then they know they've won. On the other hand, if you know a friendly lawyer who can spend a few minutes explaining the process and the really important things you need to do without charging you the earth for it, go right ahead. That might include adding certain required information to the letter itself along with a statement that it's the first formal step in your legal action, for example.

A less dramatic alternative that I've seen work several times is just to add a statement to the letter that you will charge them a reasonable "administration fee" to cover your time and trouble if you have to contact them again due to their failure to comply within a reasonable period. It's surprising how many places automatically change their behaviour as soon as something might actually cost them real money, even if it's only a nominal amount, and there's a good chance that whatever front line grunt first opens your letter won't be authorised to deal with that situation so you'll get escalated to someone more effective. As always it's worth knowing what the law says in your area before trying this one, because you don't want to do something dumb that will let them settle for peanuts later if you do wind up spending a significant amount on real legal action that you might otherwise have been entitled to recover.

So I guess it comes down to the usual things: Always keep records, always be transparently fair and reasonable, try your payment service's dispute process if it's a sensible option, and then if things still aren't working out, make sure you've taken at least some basic legal advice about your particular situation before you go charging in with something heavier and act accordingly.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Undefined behavior is often a thing for C programmers (2011) - <AUTHOR> https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2011-05-14-what-every-c-programmer-should-know_14/ <comment><USER2> Unpopular opinion: the problem isn't so much undefined behaviour, but rather that compiler vendors have chosen to exploit undefined behaviour in their optimization passes.

PS: some pragmatic cleanup of UB and IB in the C standard would be welcome though.

<comment><USER3> The reason for having UB in the first place is so compilers can exploit them so we can have more optimized programs.

UB is a feature, not a bug. So you don't really "clean" it up. Cleaning up of UB means a lot of overhead for programs.

<comment><USER4> Yes, but also, UB is a "feature" to work around the fact that C is a relatively un-expressive language with a simple type system. It's great that the compiler can optimize

        for (i = 0; i < *len; i++)
            array[i] = 0;

without having to check on each iteration whether len secretly points inside the array and got modified by the loop. It would be better if this were not a _heuristic_ and there were clear compile-time information saying for sure that this optimization is safe.

<comment><USER5> If len and array are both of the same type then the compiler must assume they can alias (or one of them is char*). One has to explicitly state with restrict that they cannot alias.

In case of similar but where it's float array[N] etc then compiler can assume that they do not alias.

<comment><USER4> Right, that's a heuristic, and the consequence of that heuristic is that a bunch of things where you intentionally have pointers of different types to the same memory - the sort of low-level data manipulation that C ought to be good for - is UB unless you are careful about it and you find one of the exceptions to this rule.

<comment><USER5> Not a heuristic. Well defined, even if it could be defined better. I'd personally make all types not alias by default and then have a separate keyword 'alias' to specify things that must alias.

One of the reasons why Fortran was faster for decades was the default aliasing rules, restrict finally got us out of that trap. If we'd always assume everything alias plenty of code would become way slower.

Also C has well defined ways to access memory via different types. Make an union type and access via that. It makes it explicit.

<comment><USER6> Is it really fair to call type punning "well defined"? To my knowledge, it was considered implementation defined from C89 all the way through C11.

<comment><USER5> Before C11 char* was the only way to do type punning, badly. So it was basically forbidden, but still well defined.

Since then they specified that unions are the way to go.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> Why oh why does "undefined behavior in C" come up constantly here? I wrote C every day for decades. I was aware there's such a thing as undefined behavior. I can't remember it ever being even a miniscule factor in my daily work. What's changed?

<comment><USER8> UB is blown out of proportion by compiler vendors and language-lawyer types concerned with portability across exotic ranges of machines, including those, where, for example, CHAR_BIT != 8.

For the most part, avoiding UB is common sense when you grasp the basic abstract C memory model - types of storage and their lifetime, avoiding out of bounds array access, keeping track of the lifetime of all allocations, etc.

<comment><USER9> That's not the issue. The issue that simple bugs become global program transformations into nonsense due to aggressive optimizations, when they should instead be compile-time errors.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> As good a time as any to pimp my own essay on the topic, from a couple years ago:

[https://raphlinus.github.io/programming/rust/2018/08/17/unde...](https://raphlinus.github.io/programming/rust/2018/08/17/undefined- behavior.html)

</comment><comment><USER11> If interested, see discussion at time of publication in 2011:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2548410](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2548410)

</comment><comment><USER12> the links to part 1[0] and part 3[2] in the text are dead (at least for me). Here they are to save other people time:

[0] [https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2011-05-13-what-every-c- programm...](https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2011-05-13-what-every-c-programmer- should-know/)

[1] [https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2011-05-14-what-every-c- programm...](https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2011-05-14-what-every-c-programmer- should-know_14/)

[2] [https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2011-05-21-what-every-c- programm...](https://blog.llvm.org/posts/2011-05-21-what-every-c-programmer- should-know_21/)

</comment><comment><USER13> Why the title change? The original title "Why undefined behavior is often a scary and terrible thing for C programmers" may be a bit polemic but occurs verbatim in the article - and IMO does a better job of expressing the article's message.

</comment><comment><USER14> The example case is flagged by a number of static checkers, for example Coverity, as a likely error (pointer is dereferenced before it is tested for null).

</comment><comment><USER15> And yet, they managed to write the Linux kernel in it, as well as thousands of other things we use every day.

<comment><USER16> One of the more pernicious problems is security checks written to detect underhanded violations of constraints being eliminated because the compiler doesn't recognize the underhandedness is possible.

In a past life, I depended on signed overflow to detect out of bounds memory allocations. That kind of stuff gets compiled away these days, you need to be cleverer to detect when the user is deliberately trying to invoke UB. And because the compiler doesn't believe in UB, there's the risk it's going to remove your detection logic.

<comment><USER5> Making signed overflow to be well defined would be so much better.

IIRC C++ just decided that signed numbers are two's complement and that's that. C could really use similar thing.

<comment><USER17> > IIRC C++ just decided that signed numbers are two's complement and that's > that.

Signed integer overflow is still undefined in C++.

<comment><USER5> You are correct. I misremembered, it was just a proposal that was not taken into the spec.

<comment><USER17> No, it's taken into the spec. It affects unsigned <-> signed conversions and maybe other things. Not integer overflow though.

<comment><USER5> Ah. Makes sense as that's relatively cheap to emulate by just doing conversion when loading and storing from memory, but allows the use of HW even in case of ones complement implementation.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Ask HN: When to apply for a real job? - <AUTHOR>

Hello.
My question is mostly aimed at self-taught developers - when did you consider yourself good enough to apply for a real job?
I realize this sort of issue is difficult to quantify, but I'm curious as to what level of skill is actually needed to work as a developer professionally.
At this point I've been writing a lot of small utilities(<200 loc) in python, random scraper/parser scripts on odesk, and playing around with Django. I can build a site or a blog engine in Django, but the ultimate problem is this:
How do you know that your skills/your code are/is good enough to work at a company.
If this question is too broad or doesn't make sense to you, keep in mind that I probably do not know industry specifics as I haven't been exposed to the real world yet.
Cheers. <comment><USER2> I had a degree in electrical engineering, but only coded substantially in VC++ (self-taught) in my fourth year of university. The university syllabus only covered the basics of Java and C++, not enough for a real job.

Thereafter, I served my National Service, and worked for 5 years in non- development roles in the Civil Service.

About 2 years before I left the Civil Service I taught myself HTML, CSS, Javascript, Linux, PHP and design, and did maybe about 2-3 free websites/web apps for friends. Just before I left the Service I was able to code small web apps in PHP.

At that point I still wasn't very confident, so applied for a developer/sysadmin role in a small company where the pay was way below market average, trying to "break into the industry".

After about 2 years of developing larger web apps, and working with major clients, I finally had some substantial development work to put on my portfolio, so I'm applying for a real developer position now.

So it took about 4 years for me to transition from being a civil servant to considering myself good enough to apply for a developer role.

</comment><comment><USER3> It is a broad question. To specify, we'd need to know which jobs you'd be applying for.

From your description, you could almost surely land an intern or junior developer position. Those of course would (hopefully) give you the work experience to move up from there.

The only way to really know is to start putting yourself out there and getting feedback from potential employers. There are just too many variables between companies for there to be an external gauge for "good enough".</comment>


FDA authorizes Abbott's fast $5 Covid-19 test - <AUTHOR> https://www.theverge.com/2020/8/26/21403432/fda-authorizes-binaxnow-covid-19-test-abbott-cheap-fast <comment><USER2> Even thought this is good news, I don't think it'll do much about getting us back to normal life. The high sensitivity rate they report is after "symptom onset."

We really need a test with a high sensitivity rate for presymptomatic and asymptomatic carriers to make a big difference day to day.

Certainly a step in the right direction, but only a step.

</comment><comment><USER3> It's not scaled out yet, but this is the best news I've heard in quite a while on the COVID-19 front. The ineffectiveness of our current mitigation attempts in the US largely stem from the long turnaround times and limited availability of tests. Test and trace doesn't work if you can't test in a timely fashion.

50M tests per month is still quite a bit short of where we would need to be for a full reopening, but it's more than twice as much as the rest of our testing combined.</comment>


Microsoft Has an Anti-GNU/Linux Team - <AUTHOR> http://boycottnovell.com/2009/08/06/wal-mart-kevin-turner-and-taskforce/

<comment><USER2> They refer to "intellectual property from Microsoft" that is being distributed with Linux, that hasn't been paid for. Does anyone know exactly what they're talking about?

Anything gNewSense got from Microsoft, Microsoft got from Apple in the first place. I respect people who choose Microsoft products because they legitimately believe them to be superior, but tactics like this are immature and spineless.

</comment><comment><USER3> Inaccurate title, and most of the underlying article is disproven conjecture.

Flagged as FUD.</comment>


Using the iPad Pro as my main computer - <AUTHOR> https://hicksdesign.co.uk/journal/using-the-ipad-pro-as-my-main-computer <comment><USER2> Until we have the ability to make iOS apps on-device, this will never be an option for a lot of folks it could be very useful for.

I also repeatedly say that I'm waiting the day when the iPad Pro actually gets some Pro software - where is Logic 'Pro', my daily driver that keeps me locked to MacOS as much as xCode does.

xCode and Logic Pro are the reasons I have a Mac at all.

<comment><USER3> Agreed, though have you seen Garageband on iOS lately? It has inherited quite a few features from Logic like the drummer, more customizable plugins / inserts, etc. Also, Cubasis and Auria are pretty powerful. Still not as powerful as Logic proper.

<comment><USER2> Yes...but it still lacks basic automation beyond Volume...is stuck to one BPM through the track and one time signature...even on an iPad Pro there's still only a 3-channel EQ...we don't have notation mode (which would be perfect for the Apple Pencil in Portrait!)...we don't have a sample/waveform editor or flex time/pitch...it's barely usable for me as a sketchpad, although it has improved _drastically_.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Having investigated this possibility as someone in the Apple ecosystem, I think Android might be ahead of iOS for web development.

Reason? Browsers on iOS are crippled: no dev tools, no view as desktop, and no alternatives to Webkit. Another reason is no mouse support. Essentially you'd be using it as a very expensive thin client.

What is intriguing about using Android is that you can actually install Ubuntu on your Android device:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6eC- CH8UG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v6eC-CH8UG4)

<comment><USER5> _Browsers on iOS are crippled: no dev tools, no view as desktop, and no alternatives to Webkit._

The degree to which this is true is pretty egregious. It has been since the beginning. How is it that Apple can keep browsers on iOS this locked down, while there was some sort of anti-trust ruling against Microsoft favoring their own browser on Windows?

<comment><USER6> How to request the desktop version of a website in mobile Safari...

Visit the affected site in Safari.

Tap and hold the Refresh button in the URL bar.

Tap Request Desktop Site.

The website will then reload as its desktop version.

<comment><USER7> That's not what they referred to. That's still loading the built in version of WebKit. On Android for example I can download Firefox and Chrome and they run on their own rendering engines.

<comment><USER8> They said both: "no view as desktop, and no alternatives to Webkit"

It has view as desktop, it doesn't have alternatives to webkit.

<comment><USER9> It doesn't work for many responsive websites since you can't spoof your screen metrics.

<comment><USER8> True, but that's more of a problem with Safari than WebKit. Here's Gmail's desktop interface zoomed way out in an iPad sidebar using iCab's desktop mode: [https://i.imgur.com/Qr56fYx.png](https://i.imgur.com/Qr56fYx.png)

You can force it to always allow zooming, block App Store links, spoof other user agents (Firefox, Chrome, IE, Opera, Googlebot, etc), download and upload files, and do all sorts of other stuff that Safari doesn't support.

User interface is admittedly more crowded so it's not my daily driver, but it's handy to keep around.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If anyone has rsi issues, I've found the ipad very helpful. The apple pencil is a great input device, and I use anker bluetooth ipad keyboard that I find very comfortable and ergonomic. I have a stand I can put my ipad in to raise it up in desk mode, but it's often just in my lap.

Got me through a rough period of rsi, and the 120 hz screen was a joy. I didn't do all my work on it, but it let me heavily reduce my computer usage.

Now that I've fixed the rsi and got a better mouse, I'm going to go back to a mac for most stuff. All the little frictions in safari on ios are starting to annoy me: it's hard to manage webapps for my business there.

But I'm going to keep using the ipad pro. I have a few drawing/video recording workflows where it is the main device, and it is a good admin device when I'm not at the computer.

Will also be getting a better computer monitor and computer. The ipad's screen, 120 hz refresh rate, and fast, fanless performance have spoiled me. Those factors are part of why I kept using the ipad even though it was worse at some tasks.

(It's also better at others, to be clear)

<comment><USER11> I'm glad to hear that your rsi was helped by using the iPad Pro as a (near) laptop replacement. I, too, suffer from some form of rsi in my left hand (i.e. not my mouse hand) and was wondering what other steps you took to "fix" your rsi. Was it mainly due to the reduced use of a keyboard with the iPad, or did you take other actions at the same time? Thanks for the great review of the pros and cons of your experience.

<comment><USER12> Switching to a tackball did the most good for my wrists and forearms. I also bought the curved kinesis keyboard. It takes a while to,get used to the kinesis key layout, but now that I have I type insanely fast on it.

<comment><USER11> Thanks very much. I'll look into the Kinesis keyboard. I have a Microsoft Natural Ergonomic Keyboard 4000 connected to my MacBook Pro right now, but the design of the Kinesis looks interesting. My non-mouse hand (left) is the issue, but perhaps I will think of switching to a trackball as a preventative measure for my right hand. Fiftieth B'day coming up next month - don't get old! (actually, it's not that bad - yet).

<comment><USER12> Getting old is definitely the worst option except for not getting old, of course ;)

Just to be definitive, I suggested the kinesis Advantage2. It should help with your non-mouse hand. There are plenty of reviews of people who claim it saved their careers from RSI.

Good luck! I've not had any rsi pain since switching to the advantage plus a trackball. I hope it works similarly for you!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I've noticed that many photographers are switching to use iPad Pros (or even regular iPads) as their main computers.

With shoots that happen on location, mobility becomes important and the ability to show clients a quick preview of the shoot right after it happens makes mobile devices ideal for many photography usecases.

Now Adobe has launched a preview of the 'full' Photoshop and Lightroom CC on the iPad Pro ([https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/15/17969754/adobe- photoshop...](https://www.theverge.com/2018/10/15/17969754/adobe-photoshop- apple-ipad-creative-cloud)) and this makes the entire workflow very smooth.

Even as a 'prosumer' photographer, I've started using my iPad to download and do quick ratings and edits on a flight back from a shoot rather than waiting for days till I get back to my desktop or carrying a heavy Macbook/Air around to a location. The real killer here was Adobe's ability to store raw images in the cloud and sync edits made on different clients.

<comment><USER14> My macbook pro is not much extra size / weight above an iPad, and my workflow (lightroom for canon, capture one for fuji) is hard to recreate on iOS anyway.

The uses for the iPad on shoots I totally get is if you're Mike Kelley and you need to check that flash fills could be composed into a final image for architecture stuff.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WKNYObucY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0WKNYObucY)

</comment></comment><comment><USER15> I had some time to kill and stopped by a Microsoft store to check out the Surface Go 10" 8GB. It was surprisingly usable and the pen digitizer had low latency, perhaps not quite as low as the iPad Pros but good enough not to feel laggy.

I kept on the lookout for an Android tablet for light work on-the-go but the Surface-Go hits the mark much better. I would also be interested in a similarly size/weight laptop but they tend to be much lower quality and performance at that size. The MacBook/Air is close, more expensive and I don't like the keyboard at all.

<comment><USER16> I got both an iPad Pro LTE and a Surface GO LTE. My simple experience:

* Surface Go: You can do pretty much anything on this device. There's no software limitations, but it may just take a while as the performance is just slow.

* iPad Pro: It's really speedy. Everything is smooth and quick, however there's too many things that iOS just can't do. Apple makes a lot of complex things easy to do, but they also manage to make some very easy things very difficult.

</comment></comment><comment><USER17> Discussion last week related to using an iPad Pro for development purposes: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18820530](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18820530)

</comment><comment><USER18> As I got older, I started gaming less (or not at all anymore), and after alot of Mac bashing (14 years ago), and tired of installing Windows 93 every few months for every family member, a huge Apple adaptor: just because I want to get things done, work, get paid for that, and spend my free time not messing around with Window's flaws. That's biased, I know, things probably improved by now, but every time I picked up a MS tablet or was given one, I still felt it was wacky.

That said, I now have all Apple stuff, even though I'm not a Apple fanboy: I just want my stuff to work and spent my free time with my wife and kids.

This sums up that I have a Macbook Pro, Ipad Pro, and an iPhone. The Macbook Pro is imho, one of the worst products they ever made. Poor battery time, crappy keyboard, no escape key, the only nice thing about it is the screen.

My iPad Pro, on the other hand... is a work of art. An incredibly good battery time (btw, battery time is also not just living on the battery, but also: working on it without a electricity socket).

So it's safe to assume that the Ipad's are wayyy more energy friendly then the MBP's.

What I don't understand about Apple is that even though the iPad's are great machines: we need people to build software for them. So, traditional PCs (where we can connect 2-3 monitors to, etc) are still essential. I think Cooke forgot about that. Jobs, nomatter what - still kept developers in mind.

I love my iPad, and am for regular browsing not using my overpriced MBP anymore. But to replace it? To get real work done? To have a "norton commander" like interface? I think it's still along road to go to replace the traditional desktops. And btw, the Apple iMac's are objectively good products, that'll last a long time for a reasonable price.

It's painful to see Lenovo releasing these frequent up-to-date great hardware laptops, and Apple, with all their billions in the bank, doing a minimalistic effort on even upgrading the Mac Mini, Mac Pro, etc.

Is it arrogance? Focus? Steve more awknoledging the coders, even in his own way?

Either way, with many Chinese developers introducing new hard and software features (foldable phones, wireless charging) and Apple always being late to the game (but then executing it well). I wonder what their strategy is there for the moment. I know no-one of my family is going to put +1000$ for a new phone.

To me, the biggest key Apple has is MacOS which is superior to any OS out there, in consistency and user-friendlyness for any end-user. Oh: and everything looks pretty and intuitive too. Even for my mom.

I hope they step up their game and make things more dev friendly, otherwise it'll be a open game, and really soon.

<comment><USER19> IMO a solid dev machine simply does not exist right now. For about the past three years I've moved between Windows, MacOS, ChromeOS with crouton and Ubuntu. They all suck quite badly in their own ways. I've chosen Ubuntu as the least bad of the bunch and stuck with it. But I'm hopeful crostini will be my savior.

<comment><USER20> I've just switched to new MacBook Air (after feeling the same way for the past few years).

Use case is typical Rails dev work, react front end, databases, docker etc.

I was worried going from a 12 core Mac Pro, to the dual core MBA, but so far I haven't noticed any difference except for those things that are faster now.

The keyboard isn't as good as the 2015 MBP, but is far better than the previous butterfly. I don't mind typing on it at all.

Great battery life too.

I think the new MBA might actually be the first decent apple laptop for devs in a few years.

<comment><USER21> I thought the new MacBook Air had the older butterfly keyboard?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope, it's got the latest 3rd gen one, same as the Pro. You're thinking of the MacBook which is stuck on gen1.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I've been drawing digitally for around 15 years, starting with the original Wacom tablets. For drawing, my iPad Pro (2018) with the Pencil 2 feels like magic. In my experience, its latency is much better than the Cintiq or the Surface. It feels so much like drawing on paper, especially with a matte screen cover. Every time I use it to draw, I feel like I'm living in the future. No piece of technology has impressed me to this degree.

That being said, outside of digital art, it's pretty clunky. The lack of a mouse pointer and proper multitasking makes it less than ideal for business uses.

But when I'm drawing on it though, man, I feel like Tom Cruise in Minority Report

</comment><comment><USER23> I've been working on iPads for years now, largely for sysadmin and back-end dev stuff. A lot of the pains go away when you remote to someplace (and in some cases, you can use a Citrix X1 mouse with your iPad), but in general the pains are:

\- Lack of a permanent "desktop mode" setting in the browser (the engine can handle it, it's just the defaults that suck)

\- Lack of an official CLI (there are a few stabs at that, some quite creative, but all third-party). There is no lack of excellent SSH/mosh/VNC/RDP apps, which for me is enough.

\- Lack of a way to background _anything_ (you can run a local web server in Pythonista and some editors, but it's always a pain)

\- Lack of a filesystem (apps like WorkingCopy mostly fixed that for doing git and use external editors, and iCloud Drive sort of nearly works as advertised, but sandboxing breaks things across apps)

That said, I manage to do quite a lot of sysadmining/writing/prototyping on an iPad, and it is still my "most personal" computer, but if I did front-end development, I'd be severely annoyed.

(I carry a Surface Pro 4 for work and love it, but I keep corporate work and pro bono/personal stuff apart)

Also, on a personal note, the music production ecosystem on iOS is nothing short of amazing, so if you have creative hobbies, the iPad is a pretty solid choice for leveraging technology without the hassles of a regular computer.

</comment><comment><USER24> My particular blocker for using an iPad (Pro) as a (non-development) PC is that _none_ of the messaging apps I use (SMS on Android, WhatsApp, Signal) have iPad versions, so even though I've got a perfectly functional iPad with keyboard in front of me, I have to use phone or PC/Mac for messaging.

<comment><USER25> Doesn't the messenger app for iPhone sync to all of your apple devices?

<comment><USER24> Yes (for SMS and iMessage), but I don't have an iPhone, so there's nothing for my iPad to sync to.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER26> I have several surface computers. While they do have their issues, the "BSOD" he showed was not one of them. I've never had a BSOD on them.

<comment><USER27> Back in the 90s I got a kick out of people claiming Macs don't crash. no they just routinely locked up where you literally had to pull the plug from the wall. but that doesn't count as a crash.

<comment><USER28> Nobody with any credibility claimed that Macs don't crash pre-OSX (the 1990s). They crashed and froze all of the time. That's why everyone was begging for an all-new operating system.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER29> Hopefully, we will soon be able to use a tablet running the _Linux desktop stack_ as a "main" computer. I can't stand iDevices or Chromebooks - they feel like they're running some Fisher-Price OS. Even plain vanilla AOSP is just _barely_ usable. (I mean, with current solutions I have to go through local VNC just to get a sensible Linux desktop and apps. That's crazy)

<comment><USER30> Purim's Librem line:

[https://www.engadget.com/2016/05/19/purism-introduces- privac...](https://www.engadget.com/2016/05/19/purism-introduces-privacy- focused-2-in-1-tablet/)

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Is there anything resembling Termux or other Linux userland environment for iPad?

Otherwise, I'm holding out for Purism's Librem tablets.

</comment><comment><USER31> I don't understand people's fascination with this. The MacBook is more powerful and basically the same size with a keyboard.

<comment><USER32> As the big iPad Pro yes; I like the small iPad Pro a lot more though. A lot of people I know, including me, find it incredible Apple stopped making the small MacBook air. Besides the worthless screen, I thought that was a perfect on the road dev laptop. I got great battery life out of it (unlike my current MBP) and it was fast enough to do dev. The current 12 inch MB is not really nice for dev and too big for me, so a lot of times when I have to travel short times, I bring my iPad Pro only. It is definitely not perfect but it works for most things I have to do on the road.

</comment></comment><comment><USER33> > While the iPad provides enough develpoment possibilities enough for me > (someone who is only using HTML CSS and JS) the sandboxed nature of the OS > means you can't run a local web server.

You can't? I'm pretty sure that this is possible.

</comment><comment><USER34> The biggest issue for me frankly (in the old days) was a lack of ad blocker. Now there's plenty of choices for iOS that are highly effective and so browsing on the web isn't a horror show.

Still no real mouse support is annoying..

</comment><comment><USER35> Another article confirming iPad Pro is pretty good for graphics designers. Yep. Still not gonna code on it. My iPad Air is still good enough for my entertainment time, and my laptop is still better for coding.

</comment><comment><USER36> I've seen more and more people using this instead of a graphic tablet. That sounds really interesting to me as the Cintiq are quite overpriced if you're not a professional.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is becoming more and more tempting...

<comment><USER38> Out of curiosity what makes this more tempting for you than a laptop? Is it just the slightly better portability combined with it seemingly being "good enough" now for productivity work?

<comment><USER39> I'm not the person you're asking, but I also have this dream. It's mainly the complexity of desktop software. The older I get (and the more responsibilities I have) the less I appreciate knobs and buttons and menu bars and the more I appreciate unified system notifications and "good enough" default settings and a full screen window with nothing behind (or in front) of it. If I need more, SSH exists.

The limitations of a tablet form factor force UI designers to be thoughtful, and the limitations of iOS force app developers to all converge on the same solutions.

I want my hardware and OS to just get out of my way so I can get my work done. Chromebooks and iPads get this right in my opinion. I feel like Android still gives me too much freedom, and I invariably always break something because I am an irresponsible child when I get bored.

When I'm working, I want to think about my work, not about my OS or hardware.

<comment><USER9> My problem is workflows that involve more than 3 apps. I just can't be productive when I am switching back and forth between apps and not able to see most everything at once.

<comment><USER39> Workflows that involve more than 3 apps are exactly what I'd be trying to avoid with this setup :)

Of course that's still just a dream. But it is a beautiful dream for me.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER40> Exactly the article I needed because I've been evaluating the same workflow.

Metacomment: Dude is a gifted, working illustrator--and is colorblind!</comment>


Show HN: Daily photos mashup - <AUTHOR> http://servletsuite.blogspot.com/2011/08/day-on-photos.html

<comment><USER2> An NSFW tag would be helpful. thanks.

<comment><AUTHOR> yes. As for any picture from Twitter</comment></comment>